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With the triumphant return of Starbase UGC, it’s time to start posting once again!

The Foundry Roundtable, a pod- and video-cast dedicated to the Foundry for Star Trek Online, will be posting each episode as it is released. We broadcast live at www.twitch.tv/thefoundryroundtable at 4:30 p.m. (U.S. Pacific Time) on Saturdays. Everyone is welcome to join in our live chatroom. Episodes go up on our Youtube Channel the following week.

In our latest show, “Episode 186: Foundry Meta” we talk about new ships recently added to the Foundry, as well as the latest spotlight, the Foundry Challenge winner, the new 3-D ship printing and much more.

*UPDATE: As of 6:20 it looks as though editing and missions are back online!*

As of the end of maintenance this afternoon, 1/21/2016, the Foundry has been taken offline for a yet to be determined length of time. Trendy posted the following in the official forums:

Hey folks!

With our update and everything coming up, we will once against temporarily be disabling UGC in STO in order to do Anniversary stuff and… other things. Also I have some Foundry stuff that I’m planning, but that’s me being a tease.

~Morrigan “LaughingTrendy”

So its possible we could be looking at downtime through the length of the anniversary event, so potentially a month, though this is all speculative at this point. It is worth noting the, and other stuff, so maybe we will have some goodies coming up?

and speaking of goodies, there was this in the patch notes for tribble on 1/20/2016:

That’s right folks, we reached another one of those times again, and with this release we will see some new objects and destinations to play with, and of course a revisit of our old friend, waiting for the editor to get turned back on. So, first up, here is a list of things we should be getting when the season launches, this list isn’t final as the official patchnotes have not yet been released as I write this post:

Sector Space Revamp:
Sector Space has been revamped into three Sector maps:
Alpha Quadrant
Beta Quadrant
Delta Quadrant
This revamp also includes additions to:
If a door in a Foundry mission is connected to an old Sector door, it will be re-directed to the new Sector Space map.
For more details, please visit the Sector Space Revamp blog at: http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/sta…r-space-revamp
Added Earth Spacedock as a UGC Map.
Added numerous Earth Spacedock Map Support Objects, including:
Turbolift and Club 47 Doors
Ops Holographic Consoles
Ship Markers
Added a new indoor template map: Diplomacy Room.
Space Stations usable on ground and in space

Three things of note:

1) With the season publish, all Foundry missions will undergo mandatory republishing once the server is active. This means for a while, we will not have access to our missions as they work through the republishing log. The republish might not commence right away so we could be looking at 72 hours before we start seeing missions repopulate the lists.

2)The sector space revamp will move planets all over the map, so all missions should be checked to make sure they reference their ‘proper’ place in the galaxy once again. This will only of course be possible once the editor is back online, which brings us to…

3)The Foundry editor will be offline for an indeterminate amount of time. This could be possibly as few as 7 days it could be as long as ‘until everything is fixed.’ The editor will remain offline for as long as the republish goes on and the verification that no data was highly corrupted during the publish.

What does this mean for us? We might have ESD, but looks like it might be getting pulled for some work, because of map location loading issues for spawn points. We are also getting all the doors, including the Club 47 ones to put on the map in order to make it look ‘realistic.’ These will come in open and closed, so if you want to wall off Club 47, but it also means you can have closed turbolifts. You can also replicate the holotub in Quinn’s office with the ship markers

.It also means that you can put ship models on the ground now. There are a few missing, most notably from the Klingon, but there are a great number of Federation ships.

We also got many starbases, but at the moment they are ‘bugged’ because you can only place them on a ground map. This might seem to be a bad thing, but actually it would be kind of awesome if they remained as placeable objects because they add a whole new type of architecture for building with.

Don’t forget to tune in to episode 2(actually, it’ll be the first real episode, but don’t tell anyone) of the Author’s Outpost. You will find us on Twitch at 7:00pm Eastern and 4:00pm Pacific every single Tuesday unless something crazy comes up to prevent it. So join me, CaptPFDennis and Castmodean, the two most experienced foundry podcast hosts(when it comes to myocardial infarction) in all of Star Trek Online.

Our weekly guest will be Aleniskendra. We’ll be reviewing a Fed mission called Time’s Razor: Part 1 by captainazzarano, and discussing Star Trek: Enterprise episodes Borderland, Cold Station 12, and The Augments. We’ll even demonstrate any technique a new author would like to see, live at the end of our show. It’s going to be wicked fun. See you then.

Today is kinda a big deal day in the Star Trek Online foundry universe. While most of us are reeling from the all too soon loss of Mr. Leonard Nimoy, it was announced this afternoon that we will be getting a great big update to how the sectors in Star Trek Online work. Now we need that the walls were coming down between worlds, but we hadnt really gotten a look at the shape of this. And now as of the blog released today, we have, and it is glorious. And here it is:

What does this mean for us? Two things, firstly we are getting a number of CANON PLANETS added and most especially added as doors. What it also means is that they are rearranging the galaxy to move things to a more canonical location. So smirk also posted this: asking that anyone who needs to rearrange the wording on their missions, to get with him so that this can be arranged for when this goes live

As seen in the tribble notes today, props from the new ESD have been added to the foundry. These will be coming soon to holodeck. Tacofangs has stated that this does not mean everything in the station though. Specifically structure.

His message,

“All of the props, means props, not all of the all of it. I don’t think I included any of the structural parts (roofs/floors/supports). My hope is to get the ESD map in one of these days, but it’s a bit of a bigger task, and I need design help for that.

Edit: Just confirmed that there is some other stuff* that got in and avoided patch notes. I’ve informed our patch master, and the extras should be noted in the Holodeck Patch notes next week.

Synopsis: It has been two days since the attack on the U.S.S. Simba. With Admiral Taka in a coma, your only hope of catching the raiders was a tracking device planted on the stolen Borg technology by Commander M’Kiara. Now the technology has surfaced on a world deep within Klingon Space. On this forgotten world you will discover the inner-workings of a plot to destroy the federation itself. Report to Deep Space K-7 in the Eta Eridani sector block to rendezvous with the U.S.S. Simba and stop a hidden evil from rising.

This is Part 3 of the series. Federation level 50+. There is music that goes with this mission. The mission dialogue will tell you when to use it.

Hello, STO Community! My name is Alenis Kendra and I am one of the newer members of the STO universe.

While populating a ground map in the Foundry recently, I realized that my population was lacking any children. Seeing I was attempting to create the feel of a poverty-stricken refugee camp, I felt that a few scurrying urchins would add a level of authenticity.

Thanks to some very helpful tips from the Foundry Chat regulars, I was able to create a reasonable facsimile of Cardassian children as custom costumes. I’d like to share what I learned with you all, in the hopes that it might help some other newbie along the way.

First, in order to create a prepubescent character, you want to start with a male alien template.

A temporary solution to long preview loading screens (along with information for Frost).

Here is what (I think) I’ve discovered. Please confirm if this works.

The problem with long preview loading screens has to do with adding objects to a map via the menus on the right of the screen.

So, load into the foundry and do nothing… You can preview your map over and over again with fast loading screens. Or, adjust items that are already loaded onto the map, when you launched the editor = fast loading screens. Or, copy and paste something already on your map using Cntl + C, Cntl + V (or the edit… paste option), then you’ll have fast loading screens.

Disclaimer: This is true, IF you haven’t already set the Foundry into long loading screen mode by trying to add something new to the map. Basically, once you are stuck with 4-5 minute loads, they are there to stay, no matter if you are messing with objects already on the map. All of the above applies before you get the loading screens, not after. Once you get a long load, then you need to reboot the Foundry.

Generally, you can avoid the long loading screens with this work-around by loading the map with all the objects you need or need to copy and paste.

Ex: If you know you’re building an office, put in all the objects that you want in a corner of the map. So, put in a desk, chairs, a fish tank, basically everything you want to use.

Then, save the project, exit the foundry, reload the project and there you go. You should have no trouble at all with loading screens while building a map with the objects that you already put in. If you need a second version of a desk, copy and paste it from the one that is already on the map. Again, placing one onto the map via the menus will bring back the loading screens of DOOM, even if the object is already on your map. You have to copy and paste a new version of it from the existing version to avoid the loading screens.

Hopefully this is just a temporary work-around, and it helps Frost to understand what is happening. But, it is working for me, and I can build again. Even if I have to stop and restart the foundry, that is preferable to a 4 minute loading screen that will never go away until you reboot the foundry.

Have you ever wonder what STO maps would look like if they were oriented to the real life stars they are suppose to represent? Below you will find sector maps as they would appear if that were taken into account. Foundry authors can use these maps to reference real life stars in their missions, and I will add more sectors as they are complete…at least out to a 100 LY sphere around Sol.

These maps were created with the real life star positions and as such the presence of Vulcan and Andor within the Vulcan Sector were the primary orientation determinant.

We want you to make mission trailers. Plain and simple. We want you to make them and post them on this site. Trailers are cool and fun to watch, but “I don’t know how to use demorecord” is a consistent complaint that we hear. Then we say “There are tutorials you can watch”, but people are still intimidated by it. “There is sooo much to it. Where do I possibly begin?”

I’m here to tell you that it’s so easy, even an old coot like me can figure it out. Most of the features that scare the crap out of you, don’t even NEED to be used. I’m just going to tell you what I do.

A quick explanation of demorecord:

Ok, to begin, let me just point out that the demorecord function of Star Trek Online is not working quite as it was intended to work. Since it was developed it has suffered with subsequent upgrades to the game. It will no longer display custom NPCs. Any NPC one has made in the Foundry costume editor will not be visible upon playback. Nobody at Cryptic will repair it because they claim it was never meant to be used by the general public and the guy who programmed it is no longer an employee. That being said, I will attempt to get you started on the simplest way to use this mechanic.continue reading…